Perhaps more than any other crisis examined in this book, the management of the 1971 India-Pakistan War epitomised the extent to which the decision-making process was constrained by Nixon and Kissinger's style of foreign policy making. Moreover, often during the crisis it seemed that Kissinger's own design of the advisory system acted as the ultimate constraint on Nixon's efforts to run U.S. foreign policy with as little bureaucratic meddling as possible. The impact of this pattern was manifested in three areas, which as has already been established, were the dominant features of the making of U.S. foreign policy during the Nixon-Kissinger years: first, the two men's disregard of the bureaucracy's advice, particularly that of the State Department; second, their predisposition to view what was in essence a regional crisis in terms of a realist, power-centred triangular politics, thus unnecessarily bringing China and the Soviet Union into the equation; and third, the issue of excessive secrecy, which was brought to the fore following the dramatic disclosure of WSAG minutes by a syndicated columnist.